


you could think better with a hole in your head

by orphan_account



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:38:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1547630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the 99 weren't on the side of the law. (Basically: their criminal counterparts)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you could think better with a hole in your head

They’re only a small part of a far larger organisation, but they’re self-contained, tight knit, and oddly isolated from the guns-and-drugs part of the gang. They research; finding targets, planning operations, working out contingencies. In fact, as Peralta often boasts, they’re the brains.

It’s quite a shock when, after a bust downtown and shooting which spooks the bosses, they’re suddenly heaped with more work, more responsibility, and – perhaps worse of all – a new supervisor.

Any sudden authority would be a shock. But especially Holt. Because whilst they got the job done, it‘s usually unconventionally. And Holt is as by-the-books as it is possible for a criminal to be.

* * *

 

There’s Peralta. Reckless, juvenile, self-entitled, yet frustratingly capable. His father was killed in a police shooting, sending Peralta veering into a life of crime. It’s tragic, but what isn’t? He refuses to follow orders, but he gets the job done, and done well. That’s probably why he isn’t lying broken and bloody in an alley somewhere. He doesn't know when to shut up (and then Santiago tells him to shut up, and then they trade insults at increasing volumes).

There is no one Peralta aggravates more than Santiago. She has seven brothers, all entangled in the mob in some way. She had to fight to get where she was, in an endlessly misogynistic organisation, and she wants to go higher still. Her sense of justice is strangely strong, discordant with her career. But she’s smart, sharp and her ambition outweighs her morality.

Jeffords too doesn’t feel comfortable with the criminal lifestyle. He used to be known as the Ebony Falcon, a name still only whispered in many shady circles. But after his kids were born, he suddenly, unsurprisingly, didn’t feel comfortable smashing people’s heads together for a living. But he was in far too deep, unable to leave. Choosing whose heads to smash together was the best he could do.

Diaz is tough. Terrifying. Her name is about all they know about her, and she likes it that way. You can tell, because whenever anyone wonders, she smirks for a half-second and pulls up the collar of her leather jacket. Her outbursts of violence are infamous, and it’s slightly surprising that she isn’t out there on the street beating up small-time dealers as an enforcer.

No one is really sure what Boyle is doing in a position like this. He has the air of an office worker, and the same beige dress code. It may be to fund his excessive taste for gourmet food. He’s not particularly efficient, but he presses on; he’s good at finding people the organisation may have 'temporarily lost track of', as it’s gingerly phrased.

Gina probably does something. The only part of the job she's good at is making sure that records aren’t kept, but that's mostly because she doesn’t care. She runs a racket in stolen property and fake designer bags, which she spends most of her time trying to organise – the gang provides nothing more than a tough sounding backer and a free desk.

There’s Hitchcock and Scully too, but they’re only there because long-term loyalty earned them some security, rather than any actual usefulness. They make good coffee.

* * *

They're a strange group, but somehow they work. Who knows how much money has changed owners thanks to them?

Their detachment from the danger and misdeeds means that often, when they all bundle down to the bar after a raid they planned went went well, it feels like a celebration. They are not, as Santiago drunkenly muses one evening, bad people. Hell, they could be police officers in another life.

I'd make a great cop, Peralta tells them, in his usual arrogant way, and he might even be right.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So these are basically just au-headcannon-things, translated into something resembling stylised prose. It's a little messy.  
> I couldn't be bothered to write a proper piece based on the idea, but I'd love to read one, so if anything even vaguely catches your attention, feel free to steal it.
> 
> The title's from Cops and Robbers by The Hoosiers.


End file.
